I Stand Alone
by Sangelide
Summary: Danny's two best friends keep him sane through everything. But when one "never met him", can he still stand?


**I Stand Alone**

Danny couldn't say why he was down here. He didn't know the reason.

It was half past midnight and school started at eight. Two dozen reasons why he should have stayed in bed immediately came to mind. If his parents knew he was fiddling around with their inventions… Well, grounding was a no-brainer. Extra chores was a given.

And he didn't even believe in ghosts.

So why was he down here, trying to fix their ghost portal?

He agreed with Jazz. When their parents tested it, nothing happened. The machine likely worked fine; there just wasn't a ghost world to 'connect' to. But his parents looked devastated.

Danny brushed it off until his best friend Tucker came over. The techno geek, who only cared about the latest technology upgrades available, asked what was wrong. When curfew came, sleep eluded him. All he could think of was his parent's expressions.

His dad, who could bounce back from anything, hadn't smiled for the rest of the day. His mom didn't bake cookies to cheer Dad up. Even Jazz refrained from listing facts that proved ghost couldn't exist.

The elder Fentons worked on that stupid portal for as long as Danny could remember. If it only worked, then Mom and Dad would go back to their annoying and highly embarrassing selves.

But it couldn't possibly work, because there wasn't a ghost realm in the first place.

So, again, why was he bothering?

Giving another sigh, Danny pulled on the gloves to a spare hazmat suit. He usually avoided the spandex abominations at all cost, but if he was going to be stupid enough to do this, he was going to be smart enough to wear protection. At least his dad's face was a detachable decal. That was something he really didn't want to be caught dead in.

Picking up his flashlight, he approached the huge machine. It looked rather intimidating in the dark. Like something out of a bad sci-fi horror film.

With a deep breath, Danny stepped inside. There were a bunch of tubes and wires going everywhere you could imagine. There was this really big conduit running down the middle of the ceiling. Following it with the flashlight, he could see it ended at the far wall and split six different directions. It looked interesting and complex enough. He'd start there and work his way back to the front.

Fate stepped in and Danny tripped on a cord. Reaching out with his free hand, he tried to catch himself. His hand brushed against something and he thought he was saved - until it gave way.

He had a second to think "Crap, I've broken something," before the pain hit.

Pure, indescribable Pain.

Later, when asked, he'd try to say it felt like every part of his body was on fire and being stabbed at the same time. But as soon as the words left his mouth, he'd know it didn't even scratch the surface. From that moment on, Danny instinctively knew there was something called 'pain', and an entirely different torture called 'Pain'.

This was Pain; Pain and a horrible scream.

It was all he could remember clearly. His parents said he was the one screaming. It was how they found him so quickly. Mom and Dad were the first to arrive and found him unconscious on the floor, next to a working ghost portal.

Jazz arrived a moment behind them and call for an ambulance while Mom looked him over for life threatening damage. Her experience in emergency first aid gave her the ability to realize he only received a very nasty shock. Dad moved him upstairs to the couch and the paramedics took things from there.

Danny didn't know how he got outside the portal. He was more than halfway in when he tripped. After the lecture Mom gave him, he didn't dare ask. She believed he was shocked while outside. The look in her eye when she stated, "If you were inside when the portal turned on…"

It still gave Danny shudders. It looked like a part of her would have died too.

Still, he left the hospital the same day he entered. Tucker was allowed over despite the grounding punishment, and Danny got the rest of the week off from school. Tuck thought the whole thing was a riot. The two boys had a great time embellishing the electrocution tale for the techno geek to tell at school.

Mom and Dad were happy as clams after he proved healthy. They studied their glowing green portal twenty-four seven. If Jazz hadn't brought home a mountain of homework for him on Friday, he would have chalked the whole thing up as a mini vacation.

Well… if he ignored the whole Pain part.

Unfortunately, life didn't let him. His body tingled in a nearly painful way at the strangest times. The doctors said it was a likely side effect of the electrical current that had run through him. The prescription: Take two Advil and call in the morning.

The pain slowly went away, but the tingling stayed. Odd little things kept happening. Clumsiness was always a factor in Danny's life, but it rose to an all time high after the accident.

Case in point, he somehow missed the next step down when descending the stairs. The first time he tumbled to the first floor he could understand; he just woke up and wasn't paying much attention. But three times in a week?

There were many times Danny swore he had a good grip on something, but it would still manage to slip out of his grasp. 'Butterfingers' became his new nickname at school. His chemistry teacher banned him from handling any delicate instruments after Danny shattered his twentieth test tube.

The weirdest bout was on Tuesday morning when he woke up underneath his bed. He was too embarrassed to mention it to his family, and Tucker just laughed when he complained about it. All the little stumbles and mess ups were driving him mad.

On Thursday Danny laid his head on his hand after lunch only to plant his face into the table. He couldn't figure out how it slipped. When slacking off in gym, he leaned against the football goal post only to slam into the ground a moment later. Of course, Tucker enjoyed watching everything.

Danny suffered in silence until Sunday. Spending the afternoon at Tuck's, they flipped through different comics to pass the time while waiting for the latest download of Doomed. Then Danny found himself underneath a bed for the second time that week.

Grumbling on the impossibilities and wondering why these things happened to him, he crawled out and started to dust himself off. "Hey Tuck. Did I fall asleep and roll off the bed or something?"

Turning around when he didn't get a response, Danny found his friend staring at the spot he had been before he found himself under the bed. "Tuck?" Walking over to his frozen friend, Danny waved a hand in front of the techno geek's eyes. "Tucker? You in there?"

The boy blinked a few times before looking at his friend. "Danny?" Tuck sounded scared. Blinking himself, Danny wondered what the joke was going to be.

"Yeah?"

"Since when could you go through my bed?"

"Huh?" Now that didn't make sense, even for a Tucker joke.

"My bed. You just went through it."

"What do you mean I just 'went through it'?"

"'Through it,' 'through it'. Like, you sank through the covers as if they weren't even there 'through it'. One moment we're discussing Marvel superheroes and the next you're gone. How'd you do it?" Tucker seemed less frightened and more excited as Danny scratched his head and wondered what Tuck saying.

"Dude! That was so cool! What was it? Did your parents invent some sort of holographic projector, or did you rig my bed with something?" His friend was patting down the bed where Danny had sat, looking for some sort of hidden catch while tossing out random theories at ten words per second.

With no end in sight Danny took action. "Tuck… Tuck… Tucker!" Grabbing his friend by the shoulders he gave him a slight shake to get his attention. When the techno-geek quieted Danny sighed in relief. "First off, no my parent's haven't invented anything new since the ghost portal. Second, I have no idea what you're talking about."

"Umm… I'm talking about the joke you just pulled. You know, the one where you went through my bed."

"Again, I have no idea what you're talking about. One moment I'm talking with you and the next I'm under the bed. You say I went through your bed, but… how does that work?" Danny started looking at the bed himself, touching the covers to make sure they were really there. And looking under the bed for any weird trap doors he might have missed.

"That's what I was asking you. How'd you pull that trick off? I mean, you haven't been over since before the accident so there really wasn't anyway for you to rig the bed. Did you're parent's invent that holograph projector before the ghost portal?"

"No Tuck. There is no holograph projector." Give a sigh of exasperation, Danny sat on the floor and wondered what was going on.

"Good. Because, as your best friend, I would have to be very upset if you didn't tell me they made one." Tuck took a seat next to Danny and gave him a curious look. "But if it wasn't my bed and it wasn't a hologram, how'd you pull that off?"

"I don't know. Just like I said: one minute I'm on top and the next I'm underneath. Last time I checked, it isn't possible for people to go through solid objects." The two boys were quiet for a while as Danny crossed his arms to think. "You know… if I ignore the whole 'it's not possible' bit, I think at least some of the things I've dropped went through my hand. I mean, I was holding that book in the library for nearly ten minutes before I dropped it on near the check out desk. And that orange at lunch; it could have slipped after being half peeled, but I didn't even have juicy fingers or anything."

Tucker looked at Danny cross-eyed, but the more the raven-haired boy thought, the more it made sense to him. "The stairs at my house! My foot went through the step, that's why I kept missing it. And my elbow didn't slip on Friday, it went through the table!" Danny grinned at the proof he wasn't a klutz freak.

"Sorry to burst your bubble man, but it's against the laws of physics for one solid object to go through another solid object. Sure, atoms are mainly composed of space, but there is not proven theory on how to utilize that fact to phase through matter." Seeing Danny's shoulders slump Tucker hastily added, "Unless the laws of physics changed… or you suddenly have some weird ability that defies the laws of physics. I mean, look at the X-men. They don't obey modern science."

"Oh yeah. Me, a superhero? Let me write that down on my 'future career' assignment for Lancer," Danny sniped. "That kind of thing doesn't happen for real… does it?" Tuck and he exchanged glances.

"Well… Let's be logical. Were you exposed to nuclear radiation recently? Or been experimented on by a mad scientist?"

Danny chuckled at that. "Nah, Mom and Dad aren't really mad… just a bit crazy. And it's been a 'hands off the children' policy since Dad let us test his Fenton Bazooka in the kitchen back in elementary school."

"Good times that," Tuck nodded fondly. "I doubt we'll find a nuclear power plant in Axiom labs. You weren't born on another planet, right?"

"Not a chance," Danny grinned. "You think my parents might have been? I mean, all they think about are ghost – that can't be normal."

"Well they do have a glowing portal in the basement. Maybe you're Dad's from another dimension, stuck with out a way back on a preliminary scouting mission gone wrong. Because Earth's technology is too primitive to break the dimensional barriers, he found your Mom, fell in love…" Tucker trailed off, not sure if he wanted to expand on that particular wild theory.

"Right," Danny drawled. "I'd hate to see the dimension where my Dad is chosen out of an entire population to go on a scouting mission."

"Hey, don't diss the theory. What's up with the neon green pool of light anyway? If anything breaks the law of physics, it's that thing."

"It's a ghost portal, Tuck. We've been over this before. All it does it stand there and look creepy while Mom and Dad run around taking readings of who-knows-what." Rolling eyes, Danny grabbed another comic book. Tuck was right. People didn't just phase through things. He probably just rolled off the bed after drifting off and Tucker wanted to play a joke.

"Hey, ghosts can go through things! They're intangible as well as transparent."

"Oh great, now am I ghost? Come on, Tuck. I'm not invisible." Thinking back to Mom's wide blue eyes, Danny shuddered. "I'm not dead either."

End

Author's Note: The biggest brain twist in Danny Phantom TV series is when Sam wishes she had never met Danny. I love how Sam is the only one that remembers a time with Danny Phantom, but I've always wondered why ghosts were roaming about Amity Park if the ghost portal had never been opened. But if the portal was opened, than Danny had to have changed into a half-ghost. Of course, without Sam his development would have been very different.  
This plot bunny has been in rough draft form for several years. I've put a little polish on it to give another heads up to my readers. I'm not dead and still working on Reclaiming Life. See my profile page for further details


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